Just as we were getting a handle on how to wear a beret the biker hat comes riding along and displaces it. To be ahead of the game, retire the Francophile look STAT and pick up full-throttle headwear instead. Bella Hadid, certainly has.
The Cali model announced her new collaboration with Los Angeles jewellers Chrome Hearts via Instagram with a picture of herself in a white patent biker cap and a puddle of pale fur. It seems fitting considering how often the model daringly reconsiders rebel staples like skater shoes and head-to-toe leather. Bella’s not the only one to give her hat game a Hells Angels twist, it’s a look that Kate Moss has been a long time fangirl of and that Françoise Hardy made her calling card.
Sitting astride a scarlet motorbike in The Wild One.jpg?w=240){href='http://www.blogcdn.com/www.cinematical.com/media/2007/05/brando-(2).jpg?w=240' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer'}, Marlon Brando was the first to give this cap cachet. His smouldering good looks and gas-guzzling bike launched a thousand rebels and copycat wearers. Namely, super’s Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell and Stephanie Seymour. Peter Lindbergh’s 1991 black and white shoot ‘Wild at Heart’, which was styled by Grace Coddington for Vogue featured this leggy list of faces pouting from underneath the peaks of black leather biker caps on the moody streets of Brooklyn.
Similarly to the beret, which draws a line between Che Guevara and the Black Panther and latinx Brown Beret movements, the biker cap carries a tangible political message. It is the headwear of rebels. It carries with it the waywardness of the open road and the free-living lifestyle of Harley riders.
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.